“Fundamental accuracy of statement is the one sole morality of writing.”
The Other Side of The Desk (The Ugly Librarian) In my middle years (not young not old) I spent many hours in serviceOn the shiny oak desks of municipal and academic librariesNot once did a sexual thought enter my head despite the staffBeing not only erudite but in some cases classically proportioned The hours for…
So finally here it is the all new revised second edition of Thames Valley Texas published to coincide with the reading I giving at Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot on Friday 7th November. I will be supporting the acclaimed new country singer Hannah White and The Dreaming Spires whose new LP ‘Normal Town’ is a suite…
My hometown of Didcot, Oxon (formerly Berks) was identified as the most normal town in the U.K. according to the BBC and researchers. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-39428314.amp? Which makes me a Normal Town Poet…. More to follow…
Cold Spell A pretend farm lies within these borders,hedges, fields and muddy tracks.One un-harvested by contract machinery,unbounded by electrified fencing. As I stand on a grass vergea mile of tarmac bubbling behind me,the horizon buckling in the heat haze,I begin to build.Wood for concrete, timber joists for steel.In my head a new farm appears.The old…
Shaun Belcher gives some excellent advice on how not to start a poetry career. July 1991I had just completed an interesting but fruitless temporary post at The Poetry Library on the South Bank through 1990 and had my poems and songs illustrated by my sadly deceased friend Laura Stenhouse at St. Martin’s College of Art…
THE GREENWASH RECYCLE Starts in a marketing agency hand-out around the milleniumSocial demarcation and quantifying statistics showed newer markets More social class segmentation and new science of social media metricsIdentified new opportunities to market directly to the A B and C groups Especially those spending more time at home, the newly affluent mothersWork from homers…
Poems written in London and Oxfordshire. Published in early 1990s in Last Gasp pamphlets. Last Gasp was a poetry open mic I helped run with poets Giles Goodland and Bridget Kursheed in Oxford. From 1986 I was heavily influenced by Raymond Carver and especially his book FIRES. Indeed I attended his memorial readings event in…
POETRY FLIES I came from Oxford I didn’t go to OxfordI visited Cambridge once I didn’t go to CambridgeI do not have a nice tidy clique to accept my poetryEven when I write nothing for thirty years I didn’t keep writing when I should haveI didn’t stack chairs for the powers that beOr fawn over…
wrote this many moons ago nothing changedthe description of Les Murray reading at the end is true POETRY IN ENGLAND There is something about poetry in EnglandThat is awfully nay terribly Middle ClassSomething not quite right in the hands of a workerSibilants dribbling like snot from the poor man’s nose Wiping its sleeve on the…